The cool wind stirring through his hair and filling his nostrils, he opened his mouth to take in a deep breath of this sweet, new life, for he had finally made it to the top of the top; the summit of the mountain we call success. It felt good, really good there at the top, except for an acute, tugging pain in his abdomen that seemed to be nagging sadistically, cackling at him like an old witch, “There’s only one direction you can go now, buddy – hee-hee hee!”

During her ride in the elevator, Linda had a hard time ignoring the large black garbage bag that was on the floor in the corner of the lift. The shiny bag sat upright and it was pointing at her and laughing.

She took an elongated deep breath, blinking her eyes closed and then open at the end of the breath. She needed courage, she needed confidence; just enough to stamp her boot over the top of the spider crawling up her loungeroom wall.

My heart pounds in my chest as thoughts of bankrupting my family and being homeless fill my head with terror and my chest with pressure, all because I quit my job to follow my dream of writing full time.

I never realized a blank white page could shout fear enough to make my hands shake and hope enough to make me dream.

Sweetly falls a mother’s breath upon her child’s neck, as softly they touch cheek to cheek, and lash to lash they try to sleep. But her keen ears are ever wary of the sounds that stalk and creep… night has just begun.

My hands and underarms grew clammy with fevered regret as I doubled over in the simple but cushy chair, head down and fingers interlocked as though in prayer. Then, the grey-haired, bifocaled man uttered the magic words that would grip my body and make it convulse wildly in a fit of rapture: “You are NOT the father!”

I hate most people – I hate their smell, I hate their voices, I hate their sad and depressing stories, I hate how they try to control me, how they try to make me do things, how they try to persuade me to kill myself, but honestly, the one who I hate most is my mother, she should care about me, not laugh at those idiocies, while who-knows-what kind of supstance goes down her digestive system, again. My mother is a pregnant woman, and once I’m born, I will kill them all.